homeschooling increases

From Greg Toppo in USAToday (hat tip: sorry, I don't remember!)...

Parents who home-school children increasingly are white, wealthy and well-educated — and their numbers have nearly doubled in a decade, a new federal government report says. What else has nearly doubled? The percentage of girls who are home-schooled. They now outnumber home-schooled boys by a wide margin.

As of spring 2007, an estimated 1.5 million, or 2.9% of all school-age children in the USA, were home-schooled, up from 1.7% in 1999.

The new figures come from the U.S. Department of Education, which found that 36% of parents said their most important reason for home schooling was to provide "religious or moral instruction"; 21% cited concerns about school environment. Only 17% cited "dissatisfaction with academic instruction."

Perhaps most significant: The ratio of home-schooled boys to girls has shifted significantly. In 1999, it was 49% boys, 51% girls. Now boys account for only 42%; 58% are girls....

The article posits "mean girls" to explain the gap. I think it's more likely that boys are more difficult to handle. Unfortunately, there is (generally speaking) more to gain for boys, given the common problems with institutional learning for boys.

Home schooling has grown most sharply for higher-income families. In 1999, 63.6% of home-schooling families earned less than $50,000. Now 60.0% earn more than $50,000....

Not holding inflation constant?! Maybe it doesn't matter-- and the results probably still hold. But that's a big mistake to make!

6.8% of college-educated parents home-school, up from 4.9% in 1999...